FUGITIVES' PASTS BRIM WITH VIOLENCE

Alfreda Dickson sat home scared Tuesday.

Her grandson had passed word the night before: The man who killed her
son Kevin Dickson more than 15 years ago had broken out of prison.

"That's supposed to be a security prison," Dickson, 83, said Tuesday
from a Sheffield home that police had promised to watch. "I don't
know how in the devil they could have been missed (by the guards)."

Authorities have said Kevin Dickson, 22, was shot dead in 1990 in an
apparent argument with his roommates over a woman. His body was found
nine years later, in a cistern on an abandoned Clarke County farm.

Casey Brodsack ultimately pleaded guilty of second-degree murder and
agreed to testify against Martin Shane Moon, then a Tennessee prison
inmate with a history that included burglaries and drugs.

Moon, 34, was serving a life sentence for Dickson's murder when he
fled the Fort Madison prison Monday. He was accompanied by Robert
Joseph Legendre, 27, who was serving two 15-years-to-life sentences
stemming from crimes committed in Nevada.

Old newspaper accounts describe Legendre's arrest for the 1996
robbery of a Las Vegas taxi driver. The man, a Hungarian immigrant,
was struck in the head repeatedly with a hammer and his taxi burned.

Fritz Schlottman, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of
Corrections, said Legendre was transferred to Iowa as part of a
normal interstate exchange of prisoners.

"He was having problems getting along with people up at our maximum
security prison," Schlottman said. "He got on the wrong side of
several inmate groups."

Schlottman said Nevada records show Legendre as being a native of
Burlington, Vt., and being frequently visited in prison by someone
from Mesa, Ariz.